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TIL: President George Washington was a lieutenant colonel in the British Army. He was unsuccessful in obtaining a royal commission but received a decree granting the British militia the same executive powers as commissioned officers. He is the only U.S President to have served the Crown.

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oR4AA TIL that the busiest highway in North America is the Toronto section of Highway 401 in Canada
pYYPO TIL in 1997 scientists successfully turned light into matter and antimatter
y648 TIL that due to waste-water injections from fracking, Oklahoma has gone from an average of about 3 earthquakes a year in the 1970’s to having roughly 900 earthquakes in 2015.
69o7W TIL: Thomas Midgley, the inventor, played an important role in introducing two environmentally disastrous products - leaded gasoline & chloro flouro carbons. At 51 he contracted polio and 4 yrs later he was strangled to death by the device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted
VM4jp TIL The 1933 worlds fair began by focusing the light from only the 37 light year distant star Arcturus onto photoelectric cells using telescopes. The resulting current switched on the floodlights at the exposition grounds.